Mr Tufte (a TED veteran) makes his case and tells us much more in his new book Beautiful Evidence, the fourth in a series of exquisite titles all of which he has written, designed and self-published. His standards are incredibly high, making his books some of the most thoughtful and beautiful objects you will ever own.

Mr Rosling makes his case through Gapminder. They are both concerned with the effective representation of evidence, I wonder what they make of each other’s work.

Sparkline (n.) A small, data-rich, word-sized graphic that can be inserted into text, and understood at a glance. Named by Edward Tufte, and explained in a chapter of his upcoming book, Beautiful Evidence. Further reading: Great examples at the Information Aesthetics blog, where sparklines are used to visualize site stats, like daily visitors and even […]

In the information age we have access to more data and knowledge than at any previous point in human history. But more accessible data doesn’t necessarily mean more processable data — tax returns, court cases and newspaper archives may be available to the public, but they are often hard to interpret and understand. Data artists […]